


Too Hot to Handle

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, sherlock can't eat spicy foods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 04:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14253270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: Sherlock’s eyes flashed. “Ridiculous. I have no such inability.”“Oh, my god,” John said, “you do. You so do.”





	Too Hot to Handle

“Your meal, sir,” said the waiter. “Extra-hot chicken curry.”

“Ta.” John scooped some up with a spoon.

His eyebrows furrowed as he chewed. “That is pretty spicy. Good, though.” He looked at Sherlock. “Do you want some?”

Sherlock was suddenly very interested in examining the state of their tablecloth.

“Sherlock?”

“I think I’m alright,” Sherlock said evenly, taking a sip of water.

John frowned. Normally, he’d put this off as typical Sherlock behaviour, but maybe he’d learned to read him over the years. A small suspicion wormed its way into his mind. He nodded, slowly. Sherlock’s eyes were fixated on the tablecloth. Definitely avoiding his gaze.

John decided to call his bluff.

“You can’t eat spicy foods,” he stated.

Sherlock’s eyes flashed. “Ridiculous. I have no such inability.”

“Oh, my god,” John said, “you do. You so do. You can’t eat spicy foods.”

“Must you be so irritating?” Sherlock snapped.

“Ooh, getting defensive.” John grinned. “I can’t believe it. The great Sherlock Holmes, beaten by extra-hot curry.”

Glowering, Sherlock reached across the table, took John’s plastic-spoonful of curry, and shoved it into his mouth.

Almost immediately, he began to turn red. John pressed his lips together, biting his tongue to keep from laughing. Sherlock’s glare intensified, and then wavered as his body began to fully process the spices with a confused panic (why was this man torturing his VR1 receptors now? Wasn’t not sleeping and not eating enough?).

“Admit it?” John suggested innocently (a bold-faced lie; there was no such thing).

In response, Sherlock dragged John’s plate closer to him, took the spoon, and, with an air of utmost determination, began shovelling the curry as fast as he could into his mouth.

John burst into peals of laughter. Sherlock didn’t react, currently occupied. His face was turning an alarming shade of crimson.

John (reluctantly; with difficulty, and lots of it) silenced the bit of him that wanted to watch Sherlock force-feed himself on spicy foods until his mouth started to bleed. One because it would be nice to see him taken down a notch, and two because food was food, and Sherlock needed it. Two birds with one spicy stone.

But he gathered all his (weakening, fading away, twisted into ridiculous standards from years of being with Sherlock) morals, took a deep breath, and reached out to place a hand on Sherlock’s.

“Sherlock,” John said, voice cracking halfway with an escaped rogue giggle, “Sherlock, sweetheart. You don’t have to. I’ll eat it.”

Sherlock glared again. It wasn’t nearly as effective with snot and tears running down his face.

And with that lovely thought, John went off again.

By the time he came to, Sherlock had finished another good portion of the curry. Tears were dripping off his chin and mixing with the rice. _Salty,_ John thought, and howled so hard the entire restaurant erupted with murmurs, casting furtive glances in their direction.

A waiter stopped at their table.

“Sir, are you alright?” he asked quietly.

John, who was currently dying, did not respond.

Sherlock raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot and furious, his face wet with snot, sweat, and tears.

“M'fine,” he hissed, voice scratchy. A bit of chicken fell out of his mouth and onto the tablecloth.

The waiter slowly blinked. He was seriously beginning to regret taking this job. “Ah,” he said stiffly. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.”

“No,” John gasped out, “someone stop him. Please, oh god, oh fuck.” It was all he could manage before dissolving into a deeper state of hysteria, moving past giggles and onwards to silent wheezing.

The waiter watched John’s descent into madness with a dull sense of alarm. Just take orders and top off water glasses, maybe a few drunk customers to clean up after, his _arse._ “I’m sorry, sir?”

Sherlock cut in. “Another serving,” he rasped. “Make it hotter.”

John tried to say something, and then he buried his face in his hands and curled up onto the seat of his chair, still silent, his entire body shuddering violently.

“OK,” the waiter said, deciding that they were probably drunk or high or a mix of both. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

 _(“NO,”_ John managed to say, but it was too late.)

Sherlock scraped the last bit of curry off the plate and painstakingly, against every instinct in his body, every thought in his mind, put it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and spent a moment dully contemplating the fact that he couldn’t feel the entire lower half of his face. It actually didn’t hurt that much anymore. Oh, wait, nevermind. Sherlock dabbed at his face with a napkin and grimaced.

Tears running down his face for an entirely different reason, John came back down to earth. He blinked at Sherlock, gave him a once-over, and furiously bit down on his lip, forcing a cap on his hysteria.

“You did it,” he said, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper in fear of setting himself off again. Christ, he was going mad. He should’ve known it was contagious.

Sherlock sniffled and winced. John was hit with a (very, very delayed) wave of guilt.

“Shit, sorry,” he said, picking up Sherlock’s glass of water from across the table and offering it to him.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock muttered.

John stood up, leaned over, and firmly pushed the rim of the glass against Sherlock’s lips. “Drink it, dickhead.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to say something possibly about John’s choice of endearments. John took his chance and tilted the glass.

Water dribbled down Sherlock’s chin and onto the table, but some managed to make its way past his lips and trickle into his mouth, where his scalded, burned, clinically-dead taste buds immediately began to rejoice—god bless lord almighty John Watson, bestowing them with lovely, lovely water.

Weakening a little, and then all at once, Sherlock took the glass of water in both hands and furiously gulped it down.

When it was finished, John offered him his own, which he took with no hesitation.

A different waiter saw this and made a move to walk over with a large pitcher of water. The waiter from before saw this, froze, and immediately ran after him. He said something into his ear. The first waiter looked startled and flustered and said something back. A few moments of this exchange later, the first waiter redirected his path to the table next to John and Sherlock, where he topped off the last few millimeters of a couple’s already-full water cups. When he left, he couldn’t help but sneak a curious glance at the table of the two men.

One of them caught his eye as he was escaping to the kitchens. “Hey!”

The waiter froze. He forced a smile on his face. “Hello,” he said stiffly.

The man didn’t seem to notice. “Could we cancel the order of a second helping of curry, please?”

“Oh. Um.” The waiter gave him a once-over—sandy blond hair, crinkly eyes, friendly-ish smile. Didn’t seem much like the “convulsing on his chair” type. “Sure?”

“Thanks!” the man said, right as the other waiter came over with the second helping of curry. “Oh, shit.”

The two waiters blinked at each other. One raised an eyebrow. The other tilted his head. One jerked his chin at the table. The other nodded towards the plate of extra- _(extra)_ hot chicken curry.

After establishing that neither of them could understand what the other was trying to convey in the slightest, the waiter with the plate placed it onto the table. “Extra-hot chicken curry,” he said, “extra- _extra_ hot.”

“Fuck,” John said. He looked at Sherlock, and then tossed his head back and howled.

Sherlock’s eyes were fixed on the plate of curry with a vague sense of horror. John clutched his stomach, laughter dwindling down to wheezes, doubling over until he was curled up on his chair.

The waiter who originally had the plate looked at the other waiter with an eyebrow raised. He did understand _that._

“Right,” he said, and both of them moved away to give the two men their privacy, each thinking about how they now had a bloody good “restaurant horror story” to tell—or at least a “restaurant what-the-hell?” one instead.

Back at the table, John was getting the best workout he had in months. Damn, if he didn’t have abs by the end of this…

“Oh, god,” he said, hiccoughing in his recovery, his voice raspy and rough, “that was absolutely brilliant. Sherlock, you are _fantastic.”_

“Normally I’d appreciate it, but if you admire a scenario like this as much as one of my deductions, I’d have to second-guess your standards.”

John giggled, feeling dazed and a little floaty. He waved a hand at the curry. “Care for another go?”

Sherlock’s face convulsed. He looked like he was going to retch.

John took pity. “Yeah, alright. Give it here.” He brought the plate over to his side of the table and dug in.

“Ooh. That _is_ hot.” He sipped some water and continued.

He felt an intuition prickling at his mind and looked up. Sherlock was watching him with mixed disgust and dismay and perhaps a bit of awe.

“How do you do that?” he demanded.

John shrugged. “How do you go without sleep for four days and then pass out in the shower?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“That’s a shit way to get yourself out of a corner. I just like the spice. It actually became sort of my party trick at uni—I’d eat chilis, hot peppers, spoonfuls of wasabi, stuff like that. Impressed some girls, though I can’t fathom why.”

“I think I get where they were coming from,” Sherlock murmured.

John paused. He raised an eyebrow.

Sherlock smiled. Subtle. Sly.

“Takeaway?” John asked. Sherlock nodded.

John raised a hand. The two waiters looked at each other and had a silent argument. The loser reluctantly trudged over to the table.

“Yes?” he asked carefully.

“A box, please,” John said. “And if you have any more of the spicy curry sauce you used for this dish…”

“John!”

“What? You think it’s hot.”

“Was that a _pun?”_

“Oh, shut it, will you?”

“You’re not bringing it into the bedroom, right? Because John Watson—”

“How stupid do you think I am? By the way, we’re washing our hands before doing anything.”

“How stupid do you think _I_ am?”

John jerked his head to the waiter. “Shit, I’m so sorry. Ignore all of that. We’re not actually—”

“Planning on making our sex life hotter and saucier in a much more literal sense, no,” Sherlock said, taking John by the shoulders and steering him towards the direction of the door. “Nevermind, we don’t need the takeout box anymore. Oh and by the way the other waiter knows you have a crush on him. No he does not like you back. Bye!”

“Wait—Sherlock—goddamnit, get off—the bill!” Struggling to retain his footing as Sherlock pushed and plowed them towards the exit of the restaurant, John yanked a note from his pocket, crumpled it into a ball, and chucked it at the waiter, who caught it instinctively. “Keep the change!”

The bell jingled as the door closed behind him.

Sherlock faux-dusted off his hands and smiled pleasantly at John.

John looked at Sherlock, then at the restaurant, then back to Sherlock.

He shook his head, his mind only now fully catching up. “I can’t believe you just did that. We can never go to that restaurant ever again.”

 _“You_ were the one in the fetal position on your chair.”

“Because of you.” John prodded around his mouth with his tongue and winced. “Shit, what did they put in that curry?”

“At least you didn’t have to eat an entire plate.”

“You didn’t have to, either!”

“My pride was on the line.”

John paused for a moment. “Oh, and it will be again very soon. Be thankful we have two loos.”

Sherlock made a noise of disgust. John laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a real life event, dramatized for your enjoyment.


End file.
